Slightly O/T - Forbidden material

[twostone]

[tlbonehead]

Maiden covers didn't work well for cover bands back in the 80s either.

definitely not.

[tlbonehead]

Im going to throw in some TESLA right now, bitches!

on purpose?

[chevybusa]

I was a teen of the 80's - Iron Maiden, Metallica, WASP.. you name it, if it was metal and not too freekin ghey, I LOVED it. Now, to my generation, DISCO was dead, an embarassement to the music community, far too sucky to even play as a joke. Of course in the mid-late 90's it finally became ok to start mashing up "one way or another" and "funky town" and stuff into medleys... So I finally just realized today that a lot of the "hair metal", not so much metallica, but Maiden, Savatage, Helloween, Whitesnake, WASP, TS, etc ..any "schtick" metal band to the teens of the 90's is like disco was to us. Even today, I can't get my other guitarist to even acknowledge some of the amazing solo work of the hair metal guitarists from my generation. It's sad because some of the best guitar work in history was done in the 80's IMO. But even today, it's like musical kryptonite ..

 

 

Oh man, I feel your pain, it's absolutely rediuclous how many people (ESPECIALLY musos!!!!) will automatically dismiss something's musical value simply because of it's label or genre...

[TrickyBoy]

 

That's NOT being fair. Flight of Icarus isn't a big "Everyone knows it" song of Maiden's. If you inverted it, they'd probably rather hear "Run to the Hills" instead of "Ride the Wind".

 

 

Probably not true. Ride the Wind, while being a {censored}ty tune, still made the Billboard top 40. Flesh and Blood was Triple platinum and had 2 really big hits. Number of the Beast barely made platinum and Run To The Hills never charted.

 

Just saying, in anything other than for an 80's metal crowd, Maiden will unfortunately be a fail. Not saying that I think that's a good thing. Just saying that it's reality.

[jeff42]

Probably not true. Ride the Wind, while being a {censored}ty tune, still made the Billboard top 40. Flesh and Blood was Triple platinum and had 2 really big hits. Number of the Beast barely made platinum and Run To The Hills never charted. Just saying, in anything other than for an 80's metal crowd, Maiden will unfortunately be a fail. Not saying that I think that's a good thing. Just saying that it's reality.

Even though I am a big maiden fan it would sail over the heads of our crowd. Even back when I was in a hard rock cover band Maiden didn't fair as well as Ozzy, sabbath or even the Metallica covers we did. One band did flight of Icarus and one band did Wasted Years. Neither worked well.

[wheresgrant3]

Probably not true. Ride the Wind, while being a {censored}ty tune, still made the Billboard top 40. Flesh and Blood was Triple platinum and had 2 really big hits. Number of the Beast barely made platinum and Run To The Hills never charted. Just saying, in anything other than for an 80's metal crowd, Maiden will unfortunately be a fail. Not saying that I think that's a good thing. Just saying that it's reality.

 

Again... a comparison of these two bands are really apples to oranges... or men to women. Poison has seven albums (and a few live and greatest hits) have sold 30 million albums worldwide. Maiden on the other hand has had 15 studio albums and has sold more than 70 million albums world wide... and that's with limited radio and TV support and no top 40 hits. They've outsold Tony Bennett, Willie Nelson and Nirvana. The difference is that Maiden's audience is predominantly male... and Poison's audience is predominantly female... or those who throng around females. The funny thing about Maiden (much like Rush, Pink Floyd, Zepplin) is that their music goes over much better in a tribute situation rather than just putting a few songs in a setlist. I know of a few regional tributes that do very well stacked against the average cover band. I wouldn't see the same sort of success with a Poison tribute... in fact I'd be a little afraid of what that crowd would look like.

[Kramerguy]

I imagine the crowd that follows steel panther would resemble a poison tribute band collection...

[wheresgrant3]

I imagine the crowd that follows steel panther would resemble a poison tribute band collection...

Um... I follow Steel Panther and I'm not about to attend a Poison Tribute. Most people at the Panther show get the joke. They are also young. I see more people in their 20's there than in their 30's and 40's. You can thank Rock of Ages for opening the floodgates of nostalgia. Panther is parody and tribute at it's very best... and in some cases out grossing the current original touring lineups.

 

And that's sorta the dilemma with various hard rock tributes. In all respects many have matured and are striving to be seen as serious artists, yet the only way to really cover them 20-30 years later is to make light of the pompous, over the top lifestyle. The tributes that work best in hard rock circles are the ones that completely parody the scene. Because it really was the height of ridiculousness. Like a bad period in Rome. 'The Decline of Western Civilization Pt II' is a historical marker for that.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qKlZELdJh8&feature=related

[Kramerguy]

LOL I don't disagree, I think it was the parody I was referring to.. in a roundabout way. To me, I nearly mock Poison as easily as I defend Maiden- It's almost compulsory. and yeah.. not with all tributes, but the over-the-top 80's can only be tributed by an over-the-top band.

[MartinC]

It's the way the ball bounces. I was brought up on guitar solos-not the 80's stuff but the sixties and seventies stuff. Everyone from the blues players to Led. Clapton, Beck, Jimi, those were my guys. Then the fusion guys-Ray Gomez, Al Di, Holdsworth, Steve Morse, etc.

I graduated from high school in '76 and by 1979 I was on the road playing top 40, but still playing a lot of great guitar parts. Not really what I wanted to play, but making a living. In just a few years, all the guitar skills I'd worked so hard to gain were no longer required by the punk and new wave acts dominating the original clubs. If you knew a few bar chords, you could play in most of those bands. The hair metal thing never appealed to me and they weren't really making any headway in SF anyhow. I had zero interest in dressing up like a girl. Lipstick and eyeliner? HAHA no freakin way. No way no matter how many guitar solos they gave you. I found another way-I went into the latin rock scene, where Santana's influence still had a hold on the local scene. All of a sudden, all these latin bands wanted me to play with them. By 1984, I was studying flamenco, and haven't looked back. Unending guitar chops appreciated. No embarrasing music. More money. Less competition. It worked very well for many years. Now, there are lots of flamenco players around. Rates came down. Expectations rose.

Play what you want to play for as long as possible. Only compromise for lots of visibility or money. Don't worry about what people want to hear. You can't control that. When your an old guy, you'll want to look back and be able to say to yourself that you played the music you loved the most. My two cents.

Edit: IMO, disco had better guitar parts than punk or new wave..........................

I was a teen of the 80's - Iron Maiden, Metallica, WASP.. you name it, if it was metal and not too freekin ghey, I LOVED it. Now, to my generation, DISCO was dead, an embarassement to the music community, far too sucky to even play as a joke. Of course in the mid-late 90's it finally became ok to start mashing up "one way or another" and "funky town" and stuff into medleys... So I finally just realized today that a lot of the "hair metal", not so much metallica, but Maiden, Savatage, Helloween, Whitesnake, WASP, TS, etc ..any "schtick" metal band to the teens of the 90's is like disco was to us. Even today, I can't get my other guitarist to even acknowledge some of the amazing solo work of the hair metal guitarists from my generation. It's sad because some of the best guitar work in history was done in the 80's IMO. But even today, it's like musical kryptonite ..

 

[Electric Catfish]

Personally the era I dread more than grunge itself is the mid 90's post grunge era... Presidents of the United States, Marcy's Playground, Days of the New, Beck, The Flaming Lips. I find little musical connection to 1994-1999...

 

 

The Flaming Lips were around for a LONG time before the grunge era. Formed in '83, first full length album in '86.

[tlbonehead]

Edit: IMO, disco had better guitar parts than punk or new wave..........................

that is simply great advice!!!

[Yer Blues]

that is simply great advice!!!

 

 

I would think that depends on the situation. That's not the goal of everyone who gets into playing music. You can easily see that just from reading some posts on this forum.

[Vito Corleone]

Again... a comparison of these two bands are really apples to oranges... or men to women. Poison has seven albums (and a few live and greatest hits) have sold 30 million albums worldwide. Maiden on the other hand has had 15 studio albums and has sold more than 70 million albums world wide... and that's with limited radio and TV support and no top 40 hits.

 

 

Ahh.. Fun with numbers. First of all, "worldwide" sales mean nothing towards trying to determine how well a cover version of one of those bands songs would work in the US. "Open Up and Say Ahh" sold 5 million copies in the US and 8 million worldwide. The best US numbers I could find on any Maiden album was the "Somewhere In Time" sold about 1 million. And I think that it would be pretty safe to say that 99% of fans of either of those bands purchased their best-selling albums. The rest of the albums sales would be mostly just selling stuff to the same fan-base over and over.

 

And then all the radio play means that there are millions of people who are familiar with Poison songs that never bought one of their albums. Outside of the million-or-so Americans who actually purchased Iron Maiden records, how many people would recognize any of their songs?

 

Yes. You're right that the few Maiden fans are a really loyal, dedicated bunch. Which is why a tribute band would work better for them than with a lot of other bands. But the actual size of the fan base is too small for a typical cover band to plug into by just pulling out one or two "hit" songs.

[Vito Corleone]

When your an old guy, you'll want to look back and be able to say to yourself that you played the music you loved the most. My two cents.

 

 

I dunno. When I look back on my past musical endeavors, which cover songs I've played, and how much I personally loved or didn't love any of them is maybe the last thing I'm interested in saying to myself about it all.

 

Musically, I'm proud of or embarrassed by, the songs I've written. The cover tunes I played in the past? Who cares? Frankly, my past history playing a big-hair 80s band lends to much more interesting stories to tell today than would be telling people "Oh, I refused to do that at the time. I considered myself a better musician than all those fools, so I wouldn't lower myself to do that..."

 

The pictures are much more entertaining as well.

 

 

No embarrasing music.

 

 

This is something I've never really understood. I've heard musicians before refer to certain cover songs they might play as being "embarrassing". To whom? Who are you worried is going to walk into a club and laugh at you or look down upon you if you are playing some certain cover song as opposed to another one?

[Kramerguy]

Are you calling Blondie disco?

 

I lump them in with disco yes. I know they saw themselves as new wave, and some of their stuff most certainly was, but their most successful material was built on the disco foundation, even though they managed to succeed after disco had effectively died.

 

Doesn't change the fact that by the mid 80's, it was lumped in with disco and considered musical suicide to even mention doing a cover of...

[Lee Knight]

I lump them in with disco yes. I know they saw themselves as new wave, and some of their stuff most certainly was, but their most successful material was built on the disco foundation, even though they managed to succeed after disco had effectively died. Doesn't change the fact that by the mid 80's, it was lumped in with disco and considered musical suicide to even mention doing a cover of...

 

 

Blondie wasn't Disco. They weren't good enough players, or rather... they weren't the right kind of players. Yes, they copped some Disco grooves, but their roots and the body of their output was garage rock, punk, art rock, 60's pop. Culminating into "New Wave".

[Vito Corleone]

I lump them in with disco yes. I know they saw themselves as new wave, and some of their stuff most certainly was, but their most successful material was built on the disco foundation, even though they managed to succeed after disco had effectively died. Doesn't change the fact that by the mid 80's, it was lumped in with disco and considered musical suicide to even mention doing a cover of...

 

 

I don't remember it like that. Blondie were a rock/new wave band that crossed over and did a couple of disco-y songs. The reason why they didn't get covered by the mid-80s was because their rock stuff was dated. No cover bands in 1985 were playing much of ANYTHING from 1979. Nobody was doing "One Way or Another" in 1985, but they weren't doing Pat Benatar's "Heartbreaker" either. But Blondie weren't considered any more of a "disco" band than were The Rolling Stones or Rod Stewart.

[Kramerguy]

it's all perspective and semantics - that's how me and my friends saw it, so by rule of the 80's, that was the reality of it. Everyone saw it different, but my point stands that nobody in the mid-80's dared to play disco or blondie, lol.

[Kramerguy]

 

but they weren't doing Pat Benatar's "Heartbreaker" either.

 

 

I do remember bands still playing sabbath, led zep, heart, and even an occasional benetar song.. they became increasingly rare during the mid-80's and gone by 89, but certainly outlasted disco and new wave.

 

IMO

[Vito Corleone]

I do remember bands still playing sabbath, led zep, heart, and even an occasional benetar song.. they became increasingly rare during the mid-80's and gone by 89,

 

 

My experience was a bit the opposite. By the later half of the 80s it had become acceptible to work some early 70s rock into the set lists, but later 70s rock was still not anything anyone wanted to hear. We were playing "Whole Lotta Love" and "Barracuda", but not "Fool in the Rain" or "Straight On". Benatar material worked to the degree the hits were current. In the mid 80s you might hear a band play "We Belong" but nobody was playing "Heartbreaker" or "Hit Me" any more. Just like everyone was doing the new Cars stuff from "Heartbeat City" then but nobody was playing "Let's Go" or "Just What I Needed".

 

but certainly outlasted disco and new wave.

 

 

Disco and New Wave were both certainly short-lived "fashion" genres, but while I guess maybe the metal-heads lumped both genres together, that only highlights the small-mindedness and musical immaturity of the metal-heads. IMO.

[MartinC]

I wasn't referring to covers specifically, but since you mentioned it, I have played some tunes, both cover and original, that if the people I grew up with, that is, the friends that truly know me, walked in, I'd be embarrassed for playing them. Because there's no way I could represent myself or them playing those tunes.

I've also been embarrassed by performing badly, and by other people on stage performing badly. I think performing music is about reveiling yourself to a large degree. When BB King sings "Every day I have the blues", people are reacting to his humanity , not the notes he's hitting. If you don't have any connection to the music your playing, communicating your humanity to the audience is going to be pretty tough.

I have in the past made a business decision to simply play what was required both to get paid, and to gain visibility in a scene, as I alluded to in my previous post. But I considered that to be a temporary situation, as my goal was always to play music that allowed me to say something, to play something that would make me proud of playing it.

If your primary goal is to play music that your audience wants to hear in front of the highest paying audience you can attract, that is different than putting your personal expression first. Some guys would rather play originals for free in front of three people than play Brick House. Pick your posion. Personally, I feel an entire life spent playing music in which your primary activity involves playing whatever pays even though you may have no connection to the music itself, seems more like a day gig that you hate than playing music. I get the whole "I'm getting off on all these hot chicks dancing thing", but that's not exclusive to playing {censored} you don't dig. I picked up the guitar because I loved what some players were doing with it, and I've tried to emulate that above all.

That's not about saying this is better than that, or I'm too good to play that. It's about saying this is what I'm saying, bitches!

I dunno. When I look back on my past musical endeavors, which cover songs I've played, and how much I personally loved or didn't love any of them is maybe the last thing I'm interested in saying to myself about it all. Musically, I'm proud of or embarrassed by, the songs I've written. The cover tunes I played in the past? Who cares? Frankly, my past history playing a big-hair 80s band lends to much more interesting stories to tell today than would be telling people "Oh, I refused to do that at the time. I considered myself a better musician than all those fools, so I wouldn't lower myself to do that..." The pictures are much more entertaining as well. This is something I've never really understood. I've heard musicians before refer to certain cover songs they might play as being "embarrassing". To whom? Who are you worried is going to walk into a club and laugh at you or look down upon you if you are playing some certain cover song as opposed to another one?

[Vito Corleone]

 

I've also been embarrassed by performing badly, and by other people on stage performing badly.

 

 

And this is the key, IMO: Is it a good and credible PERFORMANCE? "Perfomance" can mean many different things depending upon the context and goals of the individual performance. "Communicating humanity"? I dunno that that is necessary component of a good performance. But if it is critical to any particular performance, then it needs to be done well. But I'd have more respect for a band playing a Poison song well and delivering a great performance of it than a band who performs a BB King song poorly. Which is why I don't understand why some musicians find certain songs themselves to be "embarrassing" to play. Perform it well and deliver that performance to the audience and it doesn't matter WHAT song you play. In my experience those musicians most fixated on WHICH songs they play are ones who have little else to give to the performance. "Yeah, the performance was rather lame, but isn't that a GREAT song? At least I didn't play something by Poison!!"

 

 

 

If your primary goal is to play music that your audience wants to hear in front of the highest paying audience you can attract, that is different than putting your personal expression first. Some guys would rather play originals for free in front of three people than play Brick House. Pick your posion. Personally, I feel an entire life spent playing music in which your primary activity involves playing whatever pays even though you may have no connection to the music itself, seems more like a day gig that you hate than playing music.

 

 

The only time I've ever hated a gig and it felt more like a day gig than playing music was when I was working as a duo in casinos for a living. It WAS a job and, although I've used playing music as my sole means of support before, this was the only time in my life that it felt like it. Ironically, we played nothing but songs WE personally loved. Since there were no real "pack the dance floor" requirements or anything similar, we could play whatever we wanted and do the gig. But I hated it because there was no connection to the audience. We could play whatever we wanted because virtually no one actually cared about anything we played. So we played just to please ourselves and it was a soulless, miserable experience for me.

 

For me the entire purpose of performing live is to connect to the audience and move them. Which specific cover songs are necessary to help complete that? I find that to be the least compelling part of the performance. They are simply a necessary tool, and some tools work better than others depending on the requirements of the particular task at hand. I only need to connect to the material to the degree I need to do so in order to draw people into the performance.

 

It's a bit like all those Cirque du Soliel shows in Vegas. "The Beatles' Love" is a great show. And those Beatles songs are part of the hook that draws people through the door and into the performance. But the performance is what the dancers are doing with the songs. And the good performers and good performances are just as good at ANY of the CdS shows. The fact that that one show does it with Beatles songs isn't what makes that show better or worse than any of the others. And I don't believe the dancers have to have any better connection to those songs than they might with other songs in order to put on a good performance. Do they have to be Beatles fans to put on the best performances and connect to the audience?

 

I don't think the best performers need that personal connection to the songs to do so.

[Yer Blues]

.... For me the entire purpose of performing live is to connect to the audience and move them. Which specific songs are necessary to help complete that? I find that to be the least compelling part of the performance. They are simply a necessary tool, and some tools work better than others depending on the requirements of the particular task at hand. I only need to connect to the material to the degree I need to do so in order to draw people into the performance. It's a bit like all those Cirque du Soliel shows in Vegas. "The Beatles' Love" is a great show. And those Beatles songs are part of the hook that draws people through the door and into the performance. But the performance is what the dancers are doing with the songs. And the good performers and good performances are just as good at ANY of the CdS shows. The fact that that one show does it with Beatles songs isn't what makes that show better or worse than any of the others. And I don't believe the dancers have to have any better connection to those songs than they might with other songs in order to put on a good performance. Do they have to be Beatles fans to put on the best performances and connect to the audience? I don't think the best performers need that personal connection to the songs to do so.

 

 

If this is the case, why did you pick music to be your vehicle? Why not be a dancer, actor, wrestler, or preacher?